The following United States Patents comprise the closest known prior art: U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,297,761, 2,692,483, 2,202,019, 3,943,726, 4,028,904.
A growing number of people can attest to the increase in recreational time available to many, and the new products designed to make our lives more enjoyable. Entire industries have been created to fill the nationwide desire for products to aid us in spending leisure and vacation time. The recreational vehicle industry is just one example of the industry response to a nationwide trend.
A continual problem associated with the recreational industry is that of making life as convenient and comfortable as possible is remote recreational areas where there is limited or no convenient form of electrical power. Family vacationers face the problem of keeping food cool enough to preserve it over a prolonged period of time. In a recreational vehicle or boat, a refrigeration unit must be powered by a storage battery or by compressed gas. When the vehicle or boat engine is operating, the storage battery is constantly recharged. However, when the vehicle is not operating, the refrigeration unit drains the storage battery and may prevent restarting of the vehicle engine. Furthermore, seriously depleting the charge in a storage battery may damage or destroy the battery. It is clearly not cost effective to operate the vehicle engine merely to maintain a charge in the storage battery.
An obvious source of untapped energy which could be used to operate refrigerators is the heat of the sun. This is especially true when considering the fact that many recreational areas are blessed with an inordinately large amount of insolation. Indeed, this is a prime requisite for a recreation area.
Furthermore, aside from recreational uses, the amount of energy consumed in refrigeration of perishable goods is enormous. In the state of California, the amount of electricity used in refrigeration is equal to the output of two large nuclear reactors. Throughout the United States, the amount of electricity used in refrigeration is equal to the output of approximately twenty nuclear power plants. Clearly, the use of solar power to power refrigerators could save a vast amount of non-renewable energy sources, without releasing any pollutants nor contaminating the biosphere with radiation.